now call upon their respective clerks to read
the minutes, and the two clerks commence
reading together: one, the minutes of finance;
the other, a letter from the committee of
works. The clerk of the financial department
seems inclined to give way, when his chairman
roars out, " Go on, can't you? Louder, louder!"
Both clerks go gabbling on again, when a
gentleman of the vestry, who has just entered the
room, exclaims, " Hollo, what caper do you call
this?" The rival chairmen hasten to explain, both
speaking at once, and a scene ensues something
like the one in Box and Cox, where the printer
and the hatter appeal to Mrs. Bouncer to declare
whose room it is. But it is useless for Mrs.
Bouncer to explain that Mr. Box is entitled to
the room by day, and Mr. Cox by night. Mr.
Box won't stir, neither will Mr. Cox. They will
not even accommodate each other by tossing
for it. During the altercation between the two
chairmen, which lasted for fully half an hour,
their partisans kept up a chorus of wrangling,
jeering, and laughing, which left nothing to be
desired but a general engagement with fists,
inkstands, and rulers.

Scarcely a week passes without a row in the
vestry, or some case of scandalous mismanagement
in the workhouse. Only the other day a
visiting clergyman, in passing through the
infirmary, saw laid out for dead, with a bandage
round its jaw, a child which was not dead. The
history of the case is well known to the public.
The guardians were put upon their trial in a
very easy-going sort of way before Mr. Farnall,
and were acquitted; but the fact still remains
that the child might have been saved by proper
attention; worse still, that it might have been
buried alive but for the casual observation of a
gentleman passing through the ward.

The parochial affairs of London are directed
— or misdirected rather — by ignorant, incompetent,
vulgar, self-seeking men, because the rate-
payers are indifferent. In this parish there are
about a hundred and twenty vestrymen, and
every year, in the month of May, there is an
election for forty of them. No notice is sent to
the ratepayers, and the election is taken by a
show of hands in the vestry-hall; the hands
invariably belonging to the personal friends of the
candidates. For eight years past, there has
been no opposition in St. Sniffens. The vestrymen
manage the matter quietly among themselves.
It becomes a question, therefore, since
the ratepayers are so indifferent, if, in the interests
of the community at large, it has not become
the imperative duty of parliament to make
such an alteration in the law as will place the
management of parochial affairs in more
competent hands. Desperate diseases require
desperate remedies. The principle of local self-
government is, in practice, a failure, and there
seems no hopeful cure for its cancerous
inefficiency but the knife — the abolition of the
vestries, and a return to centralised autocracy.
If the ratepayers will not do their duty, let the
philanthropists take the matter in hand and see
what they can do. They may claim at least to
have some right to protect the interests of the
poor. Let us see who are the guardians of the
poor in this parish, and how they perform their
duties. Ratepayers are entitled to be present
in the gallery during the rowdy deliberations of
the vestry; but they are denied the right of
attending the meetings of the board of guardians,
to see how the poor are treated. I happen,
however, to be in a position to give a faithful
account of what takes place at the weekly
meetings of the so-called guardians of a London
parish. But first, who are these guardians,
and by whom are they appointed to their office?
They are petty shopkeepers, gas inspectors,
jobbing builders, &c. All, with few exceptions,
in this parish at least, coarse, vulgar, uneducated
men; and they are elected from their own
body by the vestry. It is sometimes said that
men who rise from a humble station are just the
sort of persons to have a fellow feeling for the
poor. Experience proves the very opposite.
These are the very men who are most harsh,
most inaccessible to any touch of pity, most
brutal in their treatment of the poor both by
word and deed. Again, it is said that the success
in life of a man of humble origin is a proof
of capacity for business, and therefore a
qualification for a parochial office. The argument
seems fair enough on the surface; but there is
no true logic in it. People of this class generally
succeed by the pursuit of a small, petty,
selfish policy, which gives no advantage to any
one but themselves. They can scrape halfpence
together, until they make a great heap; but
they cannot spend their money like gentlemen.
They have no generous sympathies or liberal
instincts. They have no breadth of view. What
they regard as business is petty saving. When
a man of this class addresses himself to the
business of guarding the poor, his leading object
is to ascertain how little a pauper can sustain
life upon. He makes a great pretence of
protecting the interests of the ratepayers; but the
whole object of the poor law is not to keep down
rates. On the contrary, the object of that law
is to make an adequate provision for the poor,
quite irrespective of the amount of the rates.
He comes to a sphere where all the interests
are wide; with views which are all narrow.
Let us see him seated at the board.

It is half-past nine on Friday morning, and
the paupers to be " guarded " are assembled in
a cold stone passage leading to the board-room.
There are nearly a hundred of them, poor starved
scared looking wretches, with hollow eyes and
sunken cheeks, and all shivering with cold and
fear. A burly, pudding-faced guardian enters
the hall, and passes on to the board-room without
bestowing a glance upon the paupers, who
shrink and cower at his approach.

The guardian who has just entered is
considered a " bad 'un" to go before. He looked
it just now, certainly, as he stalked disdainfully
through the crowd of shivering paupers; but if
you walk into his little shop and spend a few
shillings with him, you will find him as abjectly
civil a tradesman as ever sanded sugar, or tipped